David Beskow

United States Army Operations Research Analyst

Microfinance

Military leaders do not currently have an effective method to guide the allocation of economic development funds. The purpose of this article is to present a tool that will help guide how a ground commander can best allocate available funds in order to raise a community’s economic output. The tool is data driven using information from a microfinance organization, Kiva. Data from microfinance loans are utilized due to the similar purpose with that of financial aid provided by ground commanders through economic development funds. The Kiva dataset is consolidated to five sectors: Industry, Services, Agriculture, Health, and Education. These sectors act as the individual stocks that make up an ‘investment’ portfolio; the sectors then can be analyzed for optimization in terms of long term economic growth. Given a country of operation, the tool will return a portfolio recommendation with percent allocation by economic sector to be used as guidance in economic development fund distribution. This tool serves to provide much needed guidance in providing a base of economic knowledge of a country of interest and a proposal about the distribution of development funds.